The giant freighter Ever Given remained stuck in the Suez Canal for the third day in a row creating a huge backlog of ships in the canal. The ship’s Japanese owner, Shoei Kisen Kaisha, has said that the entire crew of 25 Indian nationals were safe and no oil leaks have been detected, the BBC reported.
The Suez Canal authority has temporarily suspended traffic along the waterways, while some experts predict that it will take several days to clean the canal, costing world trade billions of dollars.
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“I can’t exclude that it can last for weeks if the ship is really stuck,” Bloomberg said, quoting Peter Berdowski, chief executive of Boskalis Westminster, the salvage team’s parent company.
“It is like a huge beached whale. It is a huge weight on the sand. We may have to work with a combination of weight reduction by removing containers, oil and water from the ship, tugboats and sand dredging, ”Berdowski added, Reuters reported.
What has happened so far
The forward part of the ship is wedged about 5 meters into the canal wall, restricting refloating efforts, Bloomberg reported.
The problem started Tuesday when strong winds kicked up sands along the banks of the 120-mile narrow Suez Canal. The 200,000-plus-ton ship was heading from China to Rotterdam when gusts of up to 46 miles per hour swept the dust around it causing the crew to lose control of the ship. Then the ship hit a sandy embankment that blocked most of the canal. The vessel is still in the same position it was when it sank, Bloomberg cited Inchcape Shipping Services, a maritime services provider.
Excavation efforts are ongoing as a way to remove sand from the ship’s forward hull to pull the ship from the side.
Impact
The 400-meter-long ship has drowned both ways in one of the busiest canals linking Asia to Europe. A line of 156 large container ships, oil and gas tankers, and grain bulk vessels have created a massive traffic jam, also known as one of the worst shipping jams seen in years.
About 30 percent of the world’s shipping container volume and 12 percent of total world trade for all goods pass through the narrow canal.
By rough estimates, the lockdown in the context of the global economy hit by Covid-19 will cost about $ 9.6 billion in traffic per day, according to Lloyd’s List. Westbound traffic is worth about $ 5.1 billion per day and eastbound traffic is about $ 4.5 billion per day, Bloomberg reported.
Kaisha apologized for the disruption, but said evicting Ever Given appears extremely difficult, the BBC reported. “In cooperation with the local authorities and Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, a ship management company, we are trying to re-float [the Ever Given]But we are facing extreme difficulty, ”the BBC quoted Kaisha as saying.
Container ships have nearly doubled in size in the last decade, including with the widening and deepening of the Suez Canal to facilitate transit. The block highlights the risk to the shipping industry as ships get larger and waterways become congested, making these incidents common.
Container ships have to wait for the channel to clear or choose to sail around Africa’s southern tip, the Cape of Good Hope, which will take two more weeks of travel.
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Nick Sloane, the salvage master who led the refloating of the capsized cruise ship off the coast of Italy in 2012, believes the best chance for normal shipping will return on Sunday or Monday when the tide peaks. The rescuers may have to lighten the ship by unloading heavy items from the ship, even fuel for that matter, things that help the ship stay stable at sea.
(With contributions from the agency)
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